Faced with a mounting number of service requests for overflowing trash cans on neighborhood street corners, San Francisco experimented with smart technology to tackle the problem. Partnering with the high-tech firm Nordense, San Francisco Public Works outfitted 48 trash bins with sensors not much bigger than a deck of cards. The sensors send alerts over Wi-Fi when the receptacles hit 70 percent capacity, signaling the cans need to be emptied. Recology, the city-contracted trash hauler, then dispatches crews to empty the cans before they overflow. As an added bonus, the sensors send an alert when a can is knocked over or the door is broken so crews can respond quickly, ensuring people have appropriate places to dispose of litter. In this session, attendees will learn creative ways to use technology to improve public services.

• Merge new technology with existing assets to provide better service.
• Track data to better deploy resources.
• Manage assets smarter to reduce public complaints.

In 2016, homeless encampments started appearing in the Santa Ana River—a 30-mile-long flood control facility in the heart of Orange County, California. The encampment numbers rapidly grew to over 700 in an eighteen-month period. In January of 2018, Orange County Public Works in collaboration with several County agencies embarked on a massive effort to house the residents in local area motels and connect them with social and mental health services. A web-based GIS tool was developed to identify, locate, and remove any new encampments along 380 miles of channels utilizing in-house and contract services. This tool interfaces with the department’s Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool for public reporting for debris within the flood control district rights-of-way. Join this session to find out how emerging technology can be used to enhance safety, improve water quality, and manage public perception in flood control rights-of-way.

• Implement similar GIS and CRM tools for flood control rights-of-way.
• Enhance the safety of and improve public perception along recreational facilities within flood control rights-of-way.
• Improve water quality within flood control rights-of-way with similar encampment issues.

The City of Naples is located in Southwest Florida on the Gulf of Mexico. With an extraordinary climate, beautiful sunsets, and numerous outdoor activities throughout the winter, the Naples’ seasonal population increases roughly 35 percent over its permanent population. To reduce potable water consumption during the peak winter months, the city undertook a plan in 2012 to expand the reclaimed water distribution system. Nearly 54,600-feet of reclaimed water main was installed in well-developed areas along the Gulf Coast, serving nearly 535 properties and city-maintained medians. Total construction cost for the reclaimed water system expansion improvements were approximately $9,400,000. This presentation will focus on the master planning, public acceptance, design, and construction of the five-year reclaimed water expansion project, which was completed in 2017. Attendees will gain valuable insights on how to satisfy a community’s water demands while promoting safety and sustainability in their projects.

• Achieve community acceptance, while reducing potable water consumption.
• Recognize another option for sustainability by using treated wastewater for outdoor residential irrigation demands
• Provide an additional source of fire-fighting water to residential neighborhoods, as houses get larger.

Over the last five years, the City of Spokane has installed 16 million gallons of underground storage to prevent overflows of combined wastewater and stormwater from reaching the Spokane River. The work is part of $340 million investment, paid for in part through “green bonds.” The water quality benefit to the river is substantial, but perhaps even more important, the project changed how the City approaches infrastructure investments to deliver value to our citizens. Learn how the city has embraced an Integrated Strategy approach to infrastructure construction and improvements, including: breaking down organizational silos and integrating projects across disciplines; leveraging dollars with funding coming from all of the disciplines involved in the project; maximizing public benefits with all the work being done at one time.

• Illustrate delivering infrastructure projects in a cost-effective manner with multiple public benefits.
• Demonstrate ways to achieve cross discipline integration that looks beyond the surface of the street.
• Redefine how a city can right-size its ROW to achieve multi-modal benefits, onsite stormwater management and business corridor revitalization.

People want to feel significant: at home, at work, and in their communities. But you can’t feel significant in a vacuum. You need others. Leading is about connecting with people. All people come into relationships with their own “stuff”. We must honor the whole person in our leadership interactions. Discovering what is important and interesting to others is key to being able to lead and have influence. This session will be presented by Thom Singer, our PWX emcee. Thom is looking forward to sharing with you his insights into how to connect with others at work. Thom says that professional relationships are not always the same as friendships but building successful relationships of any type do rely on some of the same principles.

• Define what it means to be “significant”.
• Treat others in a manner that shows respect, even when you disagree.
• Discuss why the way you are seen by others matters to your effectiveness.

Grab a beverage at the Happy Hour Jam cash bar in the hallway and then join your colleagues for an insightful exchange of ideas! Join APWA's Emergency Management Committee and Jason Biermann, Director of the Snohomish County Department of Emergency Management, for a discussion on natural and other hazard response. Mr. Bierman will offer insight from his experiences responding to the 2014 Oso landslides and to the county's current response to the Opioid epidemic and its role as an emerging hazard faced by all agencies.

• Learn how Snohomish County Public Works responded to the 2014 Oslo landslides and how they are dealing with the effects of the ongoing opioid epidemic.
• Share your agency's experiences in dealing with natural disasters.
• Exchange ideas with your colleagues about dealing with new hazard types including the effects of the opioid epidemic.

Utility conflicts and relocations continue to be the primary cause of schedule delays and project cost overruns for public works projects. Developing and maintaining strong partnerships between public agencies and utility providers before conflicts arise is the key to success. Learn how to improve your utility coordination, and ultimately reduce costs, mitigate conflicts, and save time. In this session, we’ll share experiences and practical ideas for strengthening collaboration between public agencies and utility providers.

• Promote collaborative partnerships at the local and regional levels to reduce cost and time impacts of utility conflicts.
• Develop cooperative relationships to identify areas for improvement and establish regional partnerships with utility providers.
• Discuss best practices for facility identification, damage prevention, permitting strategies, regional/state coordination, data management and conflict resolution.

The changes coming from the auto industry’s evolution to fully electric, interconnected, and electronically controlled autonomous vehicles (AV) will necessitate tremendous planning by public agencies and immense changes in the way we live. While this evolution will bring improvement to our mobility, comfort, and social inclusion, there will be some drawbacks and unintended consequences. In addition to new practices for use, capacity, and the design of transportation infrastructure, we’ll need new rules, policies, and regulations. Policy makers at the federal, state, and local levels are not moving as rapidly as the technology is advancing. So what needs to be done to accelerate our efforts to catch up? This presentation will provide information about what has been achieved and what is in process at the federal, state, and local levels. We’ll discuss the changes that AV technology will require public works transportation planners to consider; the resources available from national associations, research institutes, and industry groups; and the latest approaches by U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).

• Prepare for AV technology and it’s in-depth social, mobility, and economic impacts.
• Find information about the fast-approaching and critical impacts of the AV industry on public agencies’ current rules and regulations.
• Accelerate efforts to plan for and update policies, rules, regulations to address the soon-coming mass production of Autonomous Vehicles.

Drones have quickly become a common tool for various public works functions. Join us for this examination of the process for getting a UAS (Unmanned Aircraft Systems) FAA Part 107 License and the FAA UAS Regulations for Commercial Drone Pilots. We’ll also review the various operational/field uses for drones, including construction/project management, inspection operations, engineering design, and surveying. We’ll also explore the available app and websites for data integration with your phone, tablet, and laptop.

• Review how to become a UAS/Drone Pilot and examine the FAA Commercial Drone Pilot Regulations.
• Examine the different uses of UAS/Drones for public works functions including, engineering design, surveying, construction project management and inspection operations.
• Explore the various Apps and websites available for use with UAS/Drones.

Gender diversity in the operations end of public works is shockingly poor. Women make up less than 10 percent of the workforce but even this figure includes those who work behind a desk and in secretarial roles. In the operations end of public works, it is estimated that 99 percent of the field positions are held by men. This can be attributed to stereotypes, perceptions of gender roles, biases, and several other things. This panel will explore women’s work experiences in the frontline of public works operations and offer suggestions to other women and male mentors in the industry. We’ll discuss the obstacles women currently face in public works, how to make the industry a more appealing career option for women, and strategies to improve inclusivity in operations positions.

• Explore the female viewpoint of working in the frontlines of public works operations.
• Identify some obstacles women face to progress in this industry.
• Develop strategies to create a more inclusive environment and attract more female applicants to these positions in operations.